Wednesday, June 18, 2014

My
previous post showed how much I liked the movie Edge of Tomorrow. But the people in charge have bungled the novel
to go with it. When you see this cover, you would expect a novelization of the movie,
wouldn’t you?

But
it’s no such thing. Edge of Tomorrow
was based on the Japanese novel All You
Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Instead of a vast military force flying
in from Great Britain to fight aliens on the European continent, the force is
from Japan, fighting in China. Instead of Major Cage (played by Tom Cruise),
the main character is a Japanese kid named Keiji Kiriya.

Since
this is not a negative blog, I’ll just say the novel didn’t really seem to be my
style. But it could be interesting to others, if the packaging were different.
And there’s the rub.

When
the 2001 Planet of the Apes movie
came out, it was only loosely based on the 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle. A novelization
of the movie was written, and both books were sold in bookstores. But they were
packaged so a reader could tell the difference between the original novel and
the novelization of the movie.

And
that’s how to do it. Spend the money to make a true novelization, instead of
just throwing (in this case) an Americanized cover on a significantly different
foreign work. Science fiction readers are open enough that they could get
interested in the original Japanese version. As it is, some fans will get
deeply disappointed when they realize they’ve picked up something different from
what the cover advertised.

Of
course, if the publishers want to contact me to do a quick hack writing job
based on the script, I’m available.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Drafted
into combat, William Cage, a self-centered coward, finds himself in a desperate
battle against grotesque aliens who have overrun Europe. Although the humans
are wearing armored jackets with built-in weapons, they get slaughtered. He spots
Sergeant Vrataski, a woman who has killed over a hundred aliens, but they both
get killed.

Cage
(Tom Cruise) wakes up on the eve of the invasion and is forced to go into the
same battle. This time he momentarily saves Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who tells
him to find her when he wakes up. They both die again.

On
the eve of battle again, she tells him the same thing happened to her—the aliens
can see the future, and he has accidentally tapped their ability so that he relives
the battle each time he’s killed. She went through it herself three hundred
times. Now she will train him to help win the war.

As
Cage relives the battle over and over again, he becomes a super soldier
himself. But can these two individuals turn the tide?

photo by MTV Live

Edge of Tomorrow has done it. They
actually show an army of live actors marching off to war in what in Japan would
be called mecha suits. The close ups show the intricate details of the armored
jackets: servos that give extra power to the limbs, straps to keep them
attached to the bodies, clips for fast reloading, and multi-language displays.

Also,
the military details are bell-ringing: When Cage frantically asks regarding his
weapons, “Where’s the safety?” the cynical reply is, “Exactly.” When Cage blabs too much about how they’ll all get
killed, Sergeant Major Farell (Bill Paxton) has his mouth duct-taped. And
Paxton is a delight as the Kentuckian who gives his harangue on combat as “the
great equalizer.”

Comparisons
have been made to the movie Groundhog Day,
but Edge of Tomorrow is really more
like gaming, with the player getting killed while trying to achieve more
difficult levels. For instance, Cage directs Vrataski to advance thirty yards
beyond a trench, then face to the right and fire, even though she won’t see the
alien yet. And in a pivotal scene, she asks him, “What do we do now?” He
replies, “I don’t know. We’ve never gotten this far.”

photo by gdcgraphics

But
this movie is not just for gamer guys who have emerged from their man caves.
Women will also enjoy watching Emily Blunt, she of the steel triceps, as she
never lets up on being a soldier. She is able to whack aliens to death with
what looks like a club/sorority paddle. And Tom Cruise still delivers when it
comes to action movies.

It’s
not all dreary battle—some of the first times that Cage wakes up again are
quite funny. But the title made me think it was a soap opera when I first saw it.
The phrase developed for the marketing campaign, “Live Die Repeat,” would have
been much better.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

I’ve
had more than one freelance editor go over my manuscript for The War of the Worlds and Fairies, but
the more recent once gave me some inside baseball on word length. But first,
let’s go over the starting figures.

At
science fiction conventions and writers conventions, I’ve been told that adult
fiction should be between 80,000 and 120,000 words, depending on the genre. My
manuscript came out at 121,000 words. So before I let this editor see it, I cut
2,000 words from the first three chapters. (This isn’t as radical as it sounds—for
some reason, I had people just standing around too much). You know how those
studies show that if one product is offered for $100.00, and the same thing is
offered for $99.99, people think the second one is a much better deal? I was
hoping that 119,000 would look a lot better than 121,000.

Public domain

Well,
it didn’t. This editor let me know that publishers have contracts with
bookbinders that actually include a page limit. In practical terms, a novel
from a new writer needs to be less than 100,000 words. It takes extra money to
go beyond that, which they will for an established writer. We all know they
sometimes do that for a new writer who has written something brilliant, but the
odds are against you being the one.

She
pointed out chapters totaling 27,000 words that could be cut. She didn’t think
they were bad—they were chapters with another group of characters battling the
Martian invaders elsewhere, outside England. I was kind of afraid she would say
that. But it was the logical choice. I followed her advice and cut them.

(Never
get rid of material like that. Those chapters are set aside for a sequel.)

She
also pointed out I had to emphasize a minor character more. I had assumed ahead
of time that would be good news for a writer: write more. But this was
extremely difficult. I had to insert scenes that not only fit into the timeline
for this current work, but also the timeline for the sequel.

(The
timeline was so complicated, I used an Excel spreadsheet for the first time
while writing a novel. See my entry here.)

So
I cut more words and added the new scenes The current word
count is about 93,800.

And
that’s how it’s done.

Since
you’ve patiently read this far, here’s a sample. Ashley and her friend Violet
assume the invading Martians will be easily defeated. Oh, I was also advised to
make each chapter ending a cliffhanger. How’d I do?

_______________________________________

Immediately after that
was more firing, obviously from the artillery.

“They’ve started!”
Violet hopped up in delight. “They’ve started firing. But Oriental College is
in the way. Let’s go up on the roof to watch.”

“NO.” I grabbed her arm
with both hands—too hard, since she made a gesture to bat me away, and only
just stopped short. I don’t know why I had such a terror, since we were in
Maybury and not anywhere near the fighting, but I clung to her. “Don’t go on
the roof! And not toward the study window, either.”

“All right, but I’m not
such a delicate flower.” My pixie friend counted out on her fingers. “We didn’t
see any Martian bodies at the pit. We can’t go up on the roof and watch them
get shelled. We probably won’t get to watch when the scholars dissect their—”

A crash cut off her
words. It rattled our windows and the dishes in the kitchen. It shook the floor
beneath my feet, and judging from how Violet’s dark eyes widened, she felt it
too. Clutching at each other, we rushed out onto the lawn.